If you followed the instructions in my May 21 Top Story to build new systems without installing the trouble-prone Windows Genuine Advantage app, you may want to patch your PC using something other than Windows Update, which offers again and again to install WGA.

My favorite third-party software update service is currently the Shavlik Patch Google Gadget, although Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector is a worthwhile alternative.

In today’s article, I compare several third-party patching tools that act as replacements for Windows Update and Microsoft Update. (Windows Update patches only Windows itself, whereas the more-thorough Microsoft Update finds patches for Microsoft applications in addition to Windows.)

My conclusion: You need to pick one tool you like best and stick with it. An update service may work well for one person and not so well for another, depending on your specific needs and preferences. One good patch checker should be all you need.

UPDATE 2009-07-30: In her July 30, 2009, Top Story, Susan Bradley describes patches that protect against two new vulnerabilities that target Internet Explorer and other applications. The existence of security threats such as these underlines the importance of using third-party patching tools to keep your apps up-to-date.

False readings from the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) applet were described in a May 21 Top Story by contributing editor Susan Bradley, who described a way to install Windows XP without ever downloading or running WGA.

If you’ve already installed WGA on XP, however, a program known as Autoruns — which is downloadable from Microsoft.com — lets you easily deactivate the applet.

In addition to Susan’s articles on the subject, Dennis O’Reilly’s Known Issues column on May 21 featured comments by readers who’d been seriously affected by erroneous “nongenuine” readings from WGA.

Susan linked to WGA removal instructions provided by Microsoft (see Knowledge Base article 921914), but she reported that the steps work only on early, “pilot” versions of WGA, not later versions.

WS reader Eric Levy suggests a simple way for legitimate Windows users who are suffering from false positives to disable WGA: Autoruns. This is a free program developed by SysInternals, a company started by developers Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell and acquired in 2006 by Microsoft:

“In Susan Bradley’s article, ‘Get all security patches without WGA nightmares,’ she mentions having to deal with the WGA tool at boot if Automatic Updates automatically installed it. She states that you either have to let it run or click Cancel every time you boot.

If you’re like me, you’ve got a stack of books you’ve been meaning to read that just doesn’t seem to get any smaller. Somehow, the idiosyncrasies of everyday life always manage to trump any reading time I’ve set aside … but what do you expect me to do? Ignore the season finale of “The Biggest Loser”?!? Come on!

Finally, the folks at Amazon.com have it all figured out with the Kindle 3, their newest release. Check out this commercial parody of the company’s, ahem, novel approach to reading that will make a bookworm out of even the most-determined ignoramus. I can’t wait to read that new Ben Stiller book! Play the video

Unintentionally reformatting a drive is one of the biggest mistakes you can make on a PC, but it doesn’t have to be a total disaster.

With care, you just might get everything on the wiped disk or partition back the way it was.

What to do when you reformat the wrong drive Stephen Yale had what he aptly describes as an “aaaargh!” moment:

“I had a 750GB external USB drive connected [to my PC]. I inserted a small 32MB thumb drive to reformat from NTFS to FAT32 and use as a boot disk. I went through the process of formatting the drive whilst talking to a colleague on the telephone. Inadvertently, I formatted the 750GB external USB drive instead of the thumb drive. Aaaargh!

“What can I do — if anything — to recover the data from the drive? Am I hosed or is there a chance of recovery?”

Don’t feel too bad, Stephen. Anyone who works on PCs long enough will — sooner or later — reformat the wrong drive or partition. I confess: I’ve done it, too!

In fact, the increasing use of digital cameras is making this type of error more common. You see, when you “initialize” a camera’s memory, you’re really formatting a solid-state hard drive. (Most cameras use utterly standard FAT16 or FAT32 disk formatting.)

People who would never reformat a PC’s drive will almost surely “initialize” or reformat a digital camera’s solid-state drive many times over the years they own the device. Sooner or later, almost everyone will have a reformatting “aaaargh” moment!

Whether you’re cleaning the machine of a friend or family member — or battening the hatches of your own PC — it’s handy to use security tools that do the job quickly and simply.

One tip I’ve learned: before running any antispyware or antivirus apps, clean out temp files to make your subsequent scans faster.

Dump temp files before scanning for malware Joe Montgomery wrote in to tell me about a great security time-saver:

“As someone who cleans computers as a retirement hobby and pocket-money earner, the first thing I always do is clear all temp files from the computer.”

Joe, you’re absolutely right. I do this, too, but it never occurred to me to add this step to my security instructions for readers nor to look for a tool to help. Joe pointed me to ADDPCs’ free Temp File Cleaner utility, which you can download from the company’s site.

As Joe explained, malware often hides in temp directories. Cleaning out these folders beforehand significantly reduces the scan time for your antivirus and antispyware tools. Let me mention two caveats about using this particular tool:

It requires Java 6 to run.

The utility’s aggressive default settings delete patch-uninstall files and system-restore points. Deleting these files won’t break anything but will prevent you from uninstalling the patches or going back to those restore points. If these settings concern you, you can turn them off in the program’s options.

Free antispyware tool has a bombastic name I’ve received many reader recommendations for an antispyware tool I’d never heard of before: SUPERAntiSpyware.

With a name like that, I assumed that the program had to be bogus. But it is, in fact, a legitimate antispyware program, despite the exuberant name.

You may already have been offered version 8 of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser via Windows’ built-in Automatic Updates routine, but you should be aware that some Web sites don’t work with the new release.

In my testing, IE 8’s security and compatibility settings cause problems with some sites in my testing, and XP users must first uninstall SP3 in order to remove the latest build of IE.

IE 8 is prechecked in XP and Vista updates If you use XP, you’ll see Internet Explorer 8 listed as a “high-priority update” in Windows’ Automatic Update tool. (See Figure 1.) In Vista, IE 8 is included among the updates rated “Important” by Microsoft. The Redmond company is implying that IE 8 is a security patch, not just a revised version of its Web browser.

Surprisingly, if you’ve configured Automatic Update to “download but do not install,” as I recommend, or if you use Windows Update to scan manually for patches, you’ll notice that IE 8 is prechecked to download automatically. Yikes!

The Microsoft Update blog states that IE 8 won’t install automatically. On one of my test machines, I turned off Automatic Updates and left the machine running for several days to see whether IE 8 would be installed automatically. It never happened. This will be good news to users who wish to control the changes made to their PCs.

The Windows Secrets Newsletter is published weekly on the 1st through 4th Thursdays of each month, plus occasional news updates. We skip an issue on the 5th Thursday of any month, the week of Thanksgiving, and the last two weeks of August and December. Windows Secrets is a continuation of four merged publications: Brian's Buzz on Windows and Woody's Windows Watch in 2004, the LangaList in 2006, and the Support Alert Newsletter in 2008.

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Trademarks: Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. The Windows Secrets series of books is published by Wiley Publishing Inc. The Windows Secrets Newsletter, WindowsSecrets.com, WinFind, Windows Gizmos, Security Baseline, Patch Watch, Perimeter Scan, Wacky Web Week, the Logo Design (W, S or road, and Star), and the slogan Everything Microsoft Forgot to Mention all are trademarks and service marks of iNET Interactive. All other marks are the trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.